


Driftwood, Vol. II

by jenny_of_oldstones



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Fluff, Gay Sex, M/M, One Shot Collection, Other, Romance, Smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-14
Updated: 2017-12-16
Packaged: 2018-09-19 08:40:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 14,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9430922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenny_of_oldstones/pseuds/jenny_of_oldstones
Summary: Miscellaneous prompts, fills, and other assorted Dragon Age vignettes for 2017.Mostly Fenris/Male Hawke and Dorian/Trevelyan, with other characters tossed in the mix.





	1. Hair (Male Trevelyan/Dorian Pavus) (nsfw)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lord Pavus improvises when he must.

Dorian let out a moan so loud that - for once - he was grateful that the Inquisitor’s quarters were at the top of a spindly little tower.

He was naked from the waist down with his legs spread obscenely in the unmade sheets of Trevelyan’s bed. The Inquisitor was nestled between them, sucking his cock with slow, lazy bobs of his head. His tongue left Dorian’s cock shining with drool.

“You low-mannered, twice-damned, apostate whore—” Dorian cursed and threw himself flat on the bed.

Trevelyan slurped up and off him. A web of spit bubbled between his lips and broke. “Now you just sound like my mother. You're certain we’re only distantly related?”

Trevelyan’s voice was hoarse. It made Dorian’s stomach muscles bunch and prickle.

“An odd time to bring up possible incest.” Dorian twisted his fists in the sheets as Trevelyan licked a long, wandering stripe up the seam of his balls. “Get back to it, will you?”

Instead, without so much as a gentleman's invitation, Trevelyan licked his thumb and pressed it against Dorian’s asshole.

“In, you….IN," growled Dorian. 

Trevelyan ignored him, content to apply a slow, cozy pressure. With his hand thus engaged, his lips went back to sucking.

The fire heaved in the hearth. Dorian tore up at the sheets, drawing the magic back inside himself. His hands grabbed at Trevelyan’s head.

Pulling hair was one of his favorite pastimes. In Tevinter, there were few sensations more delectable than Dorian weaving his fingers through dense, lush locks of hair, making a mess of a perfectly oiled coif in time to see hungry eyes roll up at him….

Trevelyan, naturally, was bald, and so Dorian’s hands clapped on pale, clammy scalp.

He snarled in frustration. Digging his nails into Trevelyan’s head would only make the man bite, and that was not what he was in the mood for.

So, like a damned pauper, he grabbed hold of Trevelyan’s ears instead.

That earned him a laugh.

“Yes, yes, I know how this amuses you. We’re all just waiting for you and Solas to give up…” Dorian licked his lips as he was swallowed again. “Your embarrassing twin act.”

He yanked on Trevelyan’s ears, twisting them a little.

The Inquisitor's eyes flicked up in warning. It surged heat into Dorian’s belly.

“If you don’t want your ears tugged on like a stubborn mule, then grow some hair like a civilized person—AGH.”

Trevelyan’s thumb pressed into him. Just a little, just enough to make his asshole suction longingly around it, the then tighten as he tried to draw it in.

“’aa ‘ike ‘eing ‘ald,” said Trevelyan simply. “’s ‘eaner.”

“Meaner?” said Dorian. “Meaner and more base than having hair, I agree.”

Trevelyan tapped the drooling head of his cock against his lips contemplatively.

“It’s cleaner, low-maintenance, and cost-efficient.”

“You look like a knob,” said Dorian, feeling like Sera as he did so. “Everyone around here goes about whispering behind their hands: the Inquisitor’s head looks like a big bulbous cock.”

Trevelyan shrugged. It was unfair, how desirable the man still was without hair.

“ _Please_ , amatus.”

There was the magic word. Trevelyan swallowed until his nose was pressed against the hair on Dorian's belly. 

Oh, yes, there it was. 

Skin came up under Dorian's nails as he came. His cock gave itself over to devastating spurts as it was gripped in hot, wet flesh. It was too much, far too much, and he spasmed and kicked his heel hard against Trevelyan’s shoulder and shoved him off.

Later, he almost felt guilty when he saw the little red half-moons on the shells of Trevelyan’s ears. Gashes and grooves crisscrossed his already scarred scalp, as if he’d just been skull-fucked by a badger.

Dorian groaned and threw himself back into the pillows. The mattress sunk, and the Inquisitor crawled up the bed to stretch out beside him. He looked tired as ever, but for once, pleased.

“Why in the world won’t you grow some hair?” Dorian turned on his side. His body was still tender enough that he wasn’t sure he wanted to be touched.” It really does make you look like a ghoul, you know.”

Trevelyan shrugged. “I’ve been bald since I was six.”

“You have not.”

“My brother dared me to cut off all my hair, so I did. Lady Trevelyan was furious, and she told me I would have to shave my head every day for six months as punishment.”

“Clearly, she wanted to teach you a lesson. ”

“I learned that I liked being bald.”

Dorian threw up his hands. “Have it your way then. Don't be surprised if those ears of yours get even bigger with all the penance they're going to pay.”

Trevelyan half-opened one eye. “ _You_ might wake up bald if you’re not careful.”

“And they say the Herald is magnanimous.” He brushed a finger across the shadow of Trevelyan's hairline. "In all seriousness, my dear, file it under consideration." 

Trevelyan caught the finger between his teeth. "Noted." 


	2. Riddle (Male Trevelyan/Dorian Pavus)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trevelyan escaped the Circle three times. Or so he claimed.

Dorian was knee deep in Fallow Mire mud and corpses when he first learned Trevelyan was not what he seemed.

“Wait, you escaped the Circle how many times?”

That came from Varric, shooting a quarrel between Dorian’s legs into a corpse clawing its way out of the water. They had been making their way through the rain and drear in search of a lost Inquisition patrol when the bog had decided to roll out its best welcome.

Trevelyan flashed three fingers at him. Rain dripped off his hood—the one he wore over his head no matter rain, snow or shine. Dorian had no idea how he saw a thing out of it, but Trevelyan made due, swinging his staff around with a vicious arc of lightning that spoke less of quiet Circle living and more of-

“You were an apostate?”

That, naturally, from Vivienne.

“We’re all apostates now,” said Trevelyan.

“You know what I mean, darling."

“Perhaps we can….” Trevelyan grunted. “Discuss this later?” A plume of purple electricity sheared the head off the neck of a shambling corpse.

“I simply find it curious claim, my dear.”

A shard of ice tore through three corpses like tissue paper. Madame de Fer, Dorian was beginning to learn, knew how to punctuate her point.

The corpses dealt with, they continued, more carefully, down the boardwalk towards the beacon on the hill. They were all soaked to the bone. Dorian’s head pounded with a heat that made him want to pass out, or at least made him reconsider his fool notion of running south to become….what was he now, a  _mercenary?_

“You’ll have to unravel all that for me,” he whispered to Varric, when Vivienne was suitably behind them and Trevelyan out of earshot in front.

“Potato, apostate,” said Varric with a shrug. “You’re asking the wrong dwarf to explain mages to you.”

“And yet I find myself a visitor in a strange land.”

Varric sighed. “The Herald’s a rogue mage.”

“A rogue mage being?” Dorian took a running leap off the sunken boardwalk onto comparatively dry land. The muck sucked at their boots as they mounted the hill.

“It means he didn’t like it in the Circle and ran away," said Varric. "Three times, which, trust me, is no record, but nothing to sneeze at either.”

Maybe it was the red pulse behind his eye, or the certainty that the chill in his bones was going to kill him, but Dorian couldn't help but snap, "how scandalous—he decided he wanted to— _gasp_ —go outside? Take a swim? Defecate without being watched by some geriatric Templar panting behind his helm?”

“Something like that,” murmured Varric.

They lapsed into silence. Trevelyan waited for them at the marker at the junction of the trail, coaxing a flower of green veilfire to life.

 

* * *

 

After an excrutiating evening of not finding the patrol, they decided to make camp.

To call that a relief was an understatement. Harding and her men found them before nightfall. Tents were erected, water boiled, and for the first time in many hours, everyone relaxed. There were dead things in the water, no doubt Avvar watching from the hills, but no one was in a state to care by that point. Dorian threw down his pack and staff inside a tent beside a snoring elf woman, collapsed into a sodden cot, and no force in Thedas or the Fade could compel him to move after that.

It was silence that woke him later.

The rain had stopped. It must have been….after midnight, at least? It took him a moment to realize he’d fallen asleep in his wet cloak and boots, and that his feet were numb. He pulled off his boots and socks to find his toes covered in something itchy, clammy, and pale.

Wouldn’t that be wonderful? One day of truly roughing it, and Dorian Pavus, scion of House Pavus, most recently out of Minrathous, loses both his feet.

He poked the elf woman beside him in the ribs. “Does this look like swamp rot to you?”

She blinked at him, then rolled back over.

Helpful! And novel. He couldn't remember ever being ignored by an elf.

Shelving that….uncomfortable feeling for later, he tugged a scratchy woolen Inquisition blanket around his shoulders and crawled out of the tent. To his surprise, the camp was still mostly awake. Trevelyan sat at the fire, Varric and Vivienne on logs beside him. A few guards stood at the edge of firelight with faces slack with exhaustion, no doubt from days of hiking and relentless, bone-freezing rain. Dorian took his place on a vacant log still warm from its former occupant.

“There’s something growing in my socks,” he said, tossing his boots into the dirt near the fire. He flexed his toes at Trevelyan. “I’m holding you responsible.”

“Be thankful it’s just growing in your socks,” murmured Varric.

Neither Trevelyan or Vivienne laughed at that. Vivienne because she was Vivienne, and Trevelyan because….difficult to say. Dorian had been with the fledgling Inquisition for two weeks, and knew next to nothing about the man. The rumors about him seemed on drearily on point: he was a mage, he hailed from a minor house in the Free Marches, and he held the key to their salvation in the palm of his hand.

This "rogue mage" business was an interesting wrinkle.

The fire crackled between them. Dorian turned his attention to the marshland around them. The moons were full and bright. Clouds raced each other across the marsh, curtains of rain dragging behind them in the distance.

“So....” said Dorian. “You escaped the Circle?”

“A few times," said Trevelyan. He was a pale, lanky man who never smiled. Nor did he look at anyone when he spoke. "I spent seven years in total in the Circle.”

“I’ve known a lot of apostates in my time,” said Varric. “Not an easy life.”

“No,” said Trevelyan. “But it was better than the alternative.”

Vivienne made a noise that was chillier than the night air. Dorian, for his part, couldn't help but stoke the flames.

“There are stories back home about apostates,” he said, swiping the damp from his mustache. “Dashing fodder."

Trevelyan snorted. "All true I assume."

"Naturally. Outrunning Templars, healing peasants, pontificating the promised land of Tevinter to the poor shivering compatriots back in the Circle—”

“You mentioned earlier that you escaped three times,” said Vivienne over him. “I find that number interesting, my dear.”

“Oh?" said Trevelyan.

"It's just an intriguing claim, seeing as no mage has ever escaped from Ostwick Circle."

A bogfisher let loose a ghostly whinny across the marsh. Trevelyan sat forward and steepled his spidery hands, studying Vivienne. They might have continued their staring contest for the rest of the night had not Varric cleared his throat.

"You'll have to clarify that, Iron Lady."

"It's simple, my dear," she said. "Ostwick Circle is an island fortress, two miles out at sea. There have been, at most, a dozen recorded escape attempts since the tower was built in the Storm Age."

Madame de Fer crossed her legs and laced her fingers atop them. 

"More than that," said Vivienne. "The only way to and from the tower is by a supply ferry that comes once a month. The headcounts and protocols for supply visits are invincibly scrutinous. No mage has ever found themselves onto that ferry, let alone managed to make the perilous swim to shore. Despite being one of the Free Marches' more sedate Circles, it is also one of the most strict." Her eyes fix on Trevelyan. "It has never once had a successful escape."

"That depends on how you define success," said Trevelyan. "I had two failed tries. The last one was all that mattered."  

"The truth edits itself apparently," said Vivienne.

For a moment, the conversation threatened to stop there. Trevelyan was already awkward, and he seemed to be increasingly uncomfortable with the direction the conversation was going. But Dorian was wide awake and he'd be damned if he let this little mystery flare out.

"So, what about the first two times?" he asked.

Trevelyan opened his mouth and Varric raised a hand. "Wait, wait." Varric tugged a leather-bound journal from inside his voluminous shirt, where it was nestled in his chest hair. He licked the nib of a quill tucked in the spine, tapped it hard on the paper, and nodded for Trevelyan to continue.

"You're not even pretending anymore?" asked Trevelyan, a little defeated.

"In for a penny, in for a pound. Now, what were you were saying?"

Trevelyan sighed. His glove made a rough sound as he rubbed it across his scalp. "There's not much story to it, really. The Templars kept lobster traps around the island to help feed their ranks. When I was fourteen, I bribed one of them to take me outside while he checked them. All I wanted was some fresh air, but looking out across the water to the mainland, I got the idea in my head to swim for it."

"You and every other apprentice," murmured Vivienne.

“Two miles of treacherous undertow, freezing waves, sharks....what's there not to like about those odds?" said Trevelyan. "I jumped in and started kicking. The Templar fell in trying to grab me.”

“ _Yeesh_. And survived?” said Varric.

“He grabbed a mooring chain and yelled for help. By the time he and his comrades had piled in a boat I was exhausted and being dragged out to sea.”

"You're not the first to attempt such a thing," said Vivienne. "There were two when I was a girl. One drowned," she said, not sounding the least bit sorry. "His lackwit partner nearly died of hypothermia."

"The second time was two years later. I waited for low tide this time, magicked myself a raft made of wrack and ice. The current carried me around and outcropping and threw me on the rocks. Broke both my arms."

“And they, of course, caught you,” said Dorian. 

“They had my phylactery.” Trevelyan shrugged. “It took them three days to figure out just where I was on the island, but yes, they did catch me, and they did punish me.”

They waited to hear what “punish” entailed, but Trevelyan did not elaborate.

“And the third time I was seventeen. I escaped, managed to stay out,” he continued. “Then the rebellion happened and there wasn't much need to worry anymore."

 _Out_. The way a prisoner spoke of his freedom. Something, Dorian suspected, Vivienne had never once felt about her own time in the Circle.

“You didn't say how you escaped the third time,” said Varric.

“I made sure to destroy my phylactery,” said Trevelyan.

"That's not really an answer," said Varric.

"Or, more likely..." Vivienne's raised a perfect, penciled brow. "This is all a fabrication to hide the fact that you've never once been outside the Circle until now." 

"You said there were a dozen recorded escape attempts. Maybe no one wanted to record mine," said Trevelyan. 

"My dear, all it would take is a letter to any number of acquaintances of mine to disprove every word you've said."  

Trevelyan looked back to the fire. "So you say." 

She almost seemed embarrassed for him. "Consider what you have told us so far." She pinched a fleck of swamp moss from the samite of her leggings and flicked it into the fire. "You claim that you escaped from the Circle of Ostwick. A famously inescapable Circle tower in the middle of the ocean, surrounded by freezing waves, on a craggy little rock ringed with guard towers with no means of transport to the mainland save a rigorously checked ferry that comes once a month. Those who have attempted to escape were either thwarted or ended up dead. And yet you expect us to believe that, after three hundred years of perfect security, you found a way to not only destroy your phylactery, but to get off an island where all others failed. It's a tale that speaks more to delusion than truth."  

A log snapped in the flames and disintegrated. The camp was deadly silent. Even the guards, who were supposed to be watching the marshes, held their breath.

Trevelyan’s lips peeled back _._  

Dorian suddenly understood why Trevelyan never smiled. His mouth was too big for his face. It pulled the skin taut over his bald head, and made him look more than a little feral. Perhaps he knew this when he turned to Vivienne and showed her all of his teeth. 

“Consider it a riddle, then,” he said.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was the first chapter of a Pavelyan story that has since been abandoned. I enjoyed it enough as a stand-alone to put it here.


	3. Beast (Male Trevelyan/Dorian Pavus)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trevelyan suffers a magical mishap in the Western Approach.

“Honestly, you couldn’t have warned me about this beforehand?” said Dorian.

He stood in the dusty courtyard of Griffon Wing Keep, the flagstones wetted now with Venatori blood and tattered rags of human flesh. In the center of the carnage crouched a heaving varghest.

Also known as Inquisitor Trevelyan.

Dorian wasn’t sure how it had happened. One moment he and Trevelyan had been surrounded on all sides by Venatori, hopelessly separated from Cassandra and Bull by several flights of stairs and corridors. They had fought back to back with Dorian slinging fireballs and Trevelyan crackling lightning. Then, without warning, a knife had passed under Dorian’s staff arm to slice through his armor and drive a pained gasp out of him—

And then Trevelyan’s back was gone. There was a sound like curtains being torn apart, a hot flash of light, and screams.

So many screams.

“Let me guess. You can’t change back now, can you?” said Dorian.

Red drool dripped off Trevelyan’s fangs. His breath was a bloody mist that speckled the ground and filled the air like an engine, heat pouring off his long, muscled frame. His eyes, dilated with rage and bloodlust, were the same warm brown Dorian had spent so many nights gazing into.

“This is exactly why you should never attempt volatile schools of magic in the field.” Dorian hopped out of the way as Trevelyan began to pace the courtyard. His talons clicked on the bloodied flagstones, while his tail bristled like an overgrown fox brush and scratched across the dirt. “Please tell me you know the counter spell.”

The varghest’s masked face swung around. Its upper lip peeled back to taste the air. Then it snorted, slung its head down, and dragged a long, pipet-like tongue through the blood.

Dorian sighed. Against a thousand warning bells, he reached down and caught the varghest's jaw in one hand. “We need to find Bull and Cassandra.”

Trevelyan growled. He turned in place a few times, the scales on his back flaring and flattening. With a huff that was almost resigned, he flattened his back plates and swung his snout at them.

“You can't be serious,” said Dorian.

Trevelyan snarled.

“I cherish my testicles, thank you. And I know for a fact you do, too.”

Trevelyan roared.

“Fine! Fine….” Dorian looked around. “Just give me….”

In the end, he tugged a tarp off a makeshift merchant stall and slung it across Trevelyan’s back. The scales still poked unpleasantly into Dorian’s sensitive region, but he found a firm grip between two armor plates and tucked his staff tight under his arm.

“Right. If you sling me off, I swear I’ll—”

He didn’t get a chance to finish. Trevelyan tore out of the courtyard with a ghostly shriek, head down and neck elongated in a surge of speed that nearly spilled Dorian down his back. He took the stairs in one gigantic leap, skidded across the landing, then charged up the next flight with a chittering that echoed and pitched. Dorian’s ass beat mercilessly against the prickly scales, and he wondered if this was the last time he'd ever be able to sit down properly.

It was almost worth it to see the look on Bull and Cassandra’s face when they stormed into the upper bailey.  For that matter, the look on the Venatori's faces.

Dorian shot an ice lance at the nearest rogue and pierced him through the eyeslit of his helm. Trevelyan waded into the thick of them, laying about with claws and biting off chunks of flesh with his sharp, curved teeth. He spun in a tight little circle, his tail crushing five Tevinters to the ground in a wave, where Bull finished them off.

When it was done, Dorian was left bellowing like a barbarian with his staff raised in the air in both hands.

Mounted on a varghest.

Who was also his lover.

Who had decided to turn into a draconid that day.

“This is….highly irregular.” Cassandra frowned down at the batty face that blinked up at her innocently. “Such magic is extremely rare. I have no idea how to change him back. Not without hurting him.”

“Oh, well if pain is the only restrictive criteria, then by all means,” said Dorian.

Trevelyan lowered his ears and whined.

“It is possible the spell will wear itself out.” Cassandra slung her war hammer into its loop on her belt. “Or, perhaps the longer he stays in this form the less likely he will be able to become human again.”

“Wait, what?” Dorian all but fell off Trevelyan’s back. Bull caught him by the hood of his cloak and set him upright. “Oh, wouldn’t that be marvelous? The varghest Inquisitor pronouncing judgment from his nest of bones in Skyhold! Taking tea and dead fennec with visiting dignitaries! Sealing rifts with a clever flick of his claw!”

“Hey, big guy, calm down,” said Bull.

“I am not taking _that_ to bed—”

As if on cue, there was that terrible tearing sound again like curtains being shredded, a clap of hot light, and Trevelyan pushed himself up off the ground from all fours. He vomited explosively all over the nearest wall, blood and bits of flesh flying off his teeth.

“Ugh.” Cassandra took a step back.

“You.” Dorian pushed forward. “ _You_ could have gotten stuck like that.”

Trevelyan cringed and bunched his spine. His ears, still long and black and pointed, withered back to their normal size. “About a five-percent chance of it, maybe. Give or take a few decimal points.”

Dorian’s fists creaked. He felt a rant reel and smoke inside him—the risk of unknown magic, the utter stupidity of testing it in battle rather than working in safe conditions with a partner—before it went limp like noodles, leaving him empty and defeated.

“It was pretty badass,” said Bull, unhelpfully, stroking his stubble in thought. “Could you change into something bigger and badder than a varghest? You know, like a drag—”

“Don’t answer that,” said Dorian. He fixed the Inquisitor with a hard stare. "Not until you show me every line of theory and diagram it with me.”

Trevleyan hacked like he was trying to cough up a hairball and spat a scale into his palm. “Looking to try out the varghest for yourself?”

“Please. If I'm to be an animal, I'll at least be something with dignity.”

“A cat maybe,” murmured Trevelyan.

“Yes.” Dorian gave his arm a swat. “I can think of a few places I'd like to scratch you.”


	4. Revenant (Fenris/Male Hawke)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fenris has an unexpected encounter at Herald's Rest.

The Qunari walked into Herald's Rest, and Fenris felt his sword arm twitch. 

He recognized him. 

It would be hard not to. There weren't many Qunari who boasted horns like that, let alone ones with loud, booming laughter that carried across a tavern like gaatlok fire. The Qunari slapped his belly beside his companion—a young man with a wincing smile who nearly buckled under the hearty clap he received—and ducked his head through the door. His one-eyed face crinkled with mirth. 

Of all the faces from his past, his was the last one Fenris expected to see at this end of the world. 

Wiping a tear from his eye and still laughing, the Qunari shoved the young man toward a group of mercenaries at a table. Rather than join them, he thudded his way across the tavern to the table where Fenris sat alone.

“Sorry to keep you waiting.” The Qunari tugged out a chair and eased himself into it. “Name’s Iron Bull, by the way.”

Bull spread his legs under the table, crowding him between a wooden support beam and the wall. “Fenris.”

“Yeah, I figured." Bull's shortened fingers made a rough sound against the stubble of his throat. "You just get in today?" 

"This morning." He had spent one day in Skyhold, and already the entire castle knew that the Champion's partner was present. There had been no shortage of rude attention given to him as he wandered the grounds. Everywhere he went, his markings were stared at, whispered about, if not pointed at blatantly. It seemed a cherry on an otherwise exhausting day that the two men who were supposed to meet him here were now conveniently late. 

"Right," said Bull. “So, let’s cut to the chase. You know who I am, and I know who you are."

“So you say.”

“I didn't put the pieces together until I saw you in the great hall earlier. When I read about you in Varric’s book, I thought, no way. There's gotta be two lyrium-branded ex-slaves running around out there. But nope, here you are, still kicking.” Bull nodded. “Well done.”

Fenris said nothing. The Qunari’s tone was a little too light, a little too careful. There were no weapons permitted inside the tavern, but ‘unarmed’ meant about as much to Fenris as it did to a man like Bull.

“I’m not angry.” Bull leaned back in his chair and slung an arm, the arm with the shortened fingers, over the back. “You took a lot of our guys, we took a lot of yours. It’s a nice balance. Old news.”

“And the reason you’re bringing it up now is because?” Fenris scanned the tavern. The mercenary company was watching them curiously. They didn’t know what this was about. The rest of the patrons had, likewise, gone quiet, though they would be hard pressed to hear any of the soft words Bull was pouring in his ear.

“A bit of professional closure.” Bull folded his hands on his stomach. His shortened fingers tapped a rhythm on his belt buckle. “The Fog Warriors I interrogated on Seheron were very tight-lipped. They chewed through their own tongues before they could give anything away. Tough bastards, for a bunch of bark-wearing forest dwellers.”

Fenris sipped his ale.

“Tell me if you’ve heard this story before." The chair creaked as Bull leaned forward. "Fifteen years ago, I’m in a tavern in Seheron City, after a hard day in the jungle hunting Tal-Vashoth who’ve been giving our merchant trains a hard time. There’s this pretty human girl tending bar. She chats me up, and tells me that three years ago she was serving drinks to Vints. Now she serves drinks to Qunari. In three more years? Who knows who she’ll be serving drinks to. I tell her that she’s got a nice ass, and she laughs at that.

“We have a good tumble, and she sets me and my boys up at the inn. Brings us food, keeps the water hot, makes sure our boots are outside our rooms in the morning. Spends an hour before bed each night sketching bread crusts and dirty glasses at the bar, because ‘you have to draw not-living stuff before you can draw living stuff.’ Someone must have told her that once. Not sure where a tavern girl learns about draftsmanship otherwise.”

Bull examined his fingers, or rather, the two that were missing.

“Then one evening there’s this raid. Fog rolls in, and not the normal kind. This stuff's chalky, alchemical, burns your eyes and nose if you’re not wearing a mask. I yell for my men to make a run for the harbor where the breeze coming off the sea is the strongest, but it's too late. You know how these things go. Knives, shadows, and screams. The mist turns this roiling red like blood in water, with you guys swimming through it like sharks.”

Bull reached across, picked up Fenris’s ale, and took a drink.

“The fog clears, and there are my guys, laid out like chum on the cobblestones of this wide street, cut down to a man with their eyes all bloodshot from where they’d been choking for air. The only thing I lost were the tips of my fingers thanks to this elf with a mop of white hair. No hard feelings." Bull leaned back in his chair. "I get myself cleaned up, head back to the tavern the next morning for a hard drink and a stiff screw. Only the girl’s not there. I ask the manager, and he says that during the raid, one of the rebels ran into the tavern and grabbed her by the hair and dragged her outside. Hanged her from a tree with her own apron.”

Fenris said nothing. He watched as Bull drained the last of his tankard.

"Was it you?" said Bull.

"No," said Fenris.

"One of your friends?" 

"No one who yet lives."

"But you do know who and why." 

Bull turned his head. His remaining eye was hidden in shadow. “I could guess the reasons why your people did it. I’d probably be right for some of them. But I always wanted to hear it from the enemy’s mouth. So….”

Bull traced his remaining fingers around the inside of the mug.

“Why the girl?”

“She was a collaborator,” said Fenris without hesitation.

“She didn’t choose for us to come into her bar.”

“She put food in your mouths. She made sure your horses were stabled and your weapons were cleaned and ready for you in the morning. She was one of you, even if she did not see it herself. She was no innocent.”

“That’s a real shit answer.”

Fenris shrugged. “It wasn’t your island.”

“And it was yours, Vint?”

“I came to Seheron as property. You came there to conquer it.”

“Nothing like the blood were you were spilling, right?”

Fenris suddenly felt weary. It had been a long time since he’d debated this with anyone, let alone a ghost from his past.

“You came to Seheron as butchers as the magisters came as butchers. What happened to the girl was unfortunate, but it was not my doing. We’re done here.”

He started to rise and a very large, maimed hand landed firmly on his shoulder. The grip was as merciless as he remembered. He could taste the blood splashing his mouth as clearly now as he did when he cut through the last two knuckles fifteen years ago.

"Why don't you sit back down a minute?" said Bull. 

"I owe you no debt, _Qunari_." The lyrium flashed hot under his skin. "Remove your hand or lose more than the tips of your fingers this time." 

"Hey now." The nails on the giant's hands dug hard into his shoulder. "I just want to talk. How's about another drink between old friends?" 

It was only then that Fenris realized the tavern had gone silent. The mercenaries were half out of their seats with their hands on hidden knives. The air was sharp with the promise of violence, and Fenris counted the breaths before it all turned red-

"I believe you're in my chair.”

Fenris blinked. Hawke stood behind Bull’s chair as if he had just materialized there. His dagger tested the pulse of Bull’s throat. From the momentary widening of the Qunari’s eye, it was clear he wasn’t quite sure where the man had come from either.

“You’re a little blazed, Tiny,” said Varric, strolling up. “Sleep it off.”

“I know I said I’d roll you on your stomach later,” said a sultry voice from behind them, as a third rogue appeared from the shadows. “But something came up.”

“Isabela?” said Fenris.

“What? You three the only ones allowed to run off and play heretic?” She winked at him from under her giant feathered hat. “You wouldn’t _believe_ the gold they’re paying me.”

Hawke’s face remained unamused. “My seat. Get out of it.”

“No problem.” The chair scraped as Bull stood up. “Nice talking to you.”

Fenris didn’t miss the tension in the Qunari’s shoulders as he lumbered to the far side of the room to where the mercenary company sat in rapt, bristling silence….nor the way his fingers, casually, flicked the line of blood from his throat where Hawke’s dagger had cut him.

Slowly, the noise in the tavern tided back in. The serving girls rose cautiously from behind the bar. The bard, with forced cheer, plucked a jaunty tune on her lute. 

“Twenty-four hours in Skyhold and you almost start a massacre.” Varric sighed and hopped up to sit on the windowsill. “Elf, why am I not surprised?”

"You two are the ones who were late," said Fenris. Isabela bumped his hip until he let her share his seat. She threw an arm around his shoulders and put her sweaty armpit on his neck. Hawke, with a last glance over his shoulder, sat down. 

It wasn't five minutes before the dwarven bartender, scowling more than usual, came around and collected all the knives. The tavern was back in full roar. Varric started up a story and laid out the Wicked Grace cards on the table.  

“Fen?” Hawke whispered. He leaned close. “What was it?”

“I’ve met him before,” said Fenris.

“Where?”

“Seheron.”

Across the tavern, the Qunari was laughing a little too loudly at a joke.

“Is everything all right?” said Hawke.

Fenris stared down into his empty tankard. He remembered the night of the raid. The Fog Warriors had slipped a ceramic mask over his nose and mouth and adjusted the leather buckles to fit his head. Their scarred hands had painted his naked flesh in white clay until he glowed like a pale serpent under the full moon.

He ran with them, his pack, their blades flashing in the mist.

Everything had gone according to plan. They lit the fires and threw the grenades. Their feet padded on the cobbled street as they sprinted full-tilt into the mist and into the coughing, frightened Qunari. Cutting them down had been easy. He had even taken a moment, amidst the screaming and chaos, to look up at the windows of the shops around them and the faces of the townsfolk peering around pulled curtains. The shopkeepers had fled indoors at the first rattle of the Fog Warriors' bombs rolling down the streets. All except the girl sweeping the front step of the tavern. She had raised her hand, and yelled at the Qunari, _look out!_  

After the battle, he had walked under the tree where her body turned gently in the wind.

The sight of it felt good. More than good, _just_. Seheron was a place he had hoped to be his home. He hadn’t been born there, but the Fog Warriors had drawn something out of him, a protective instinct he never knew existed, a hunger to belong that he would have defended to the death. It had felt just to butcher the Qunari and their collaborators. It had felt just to drive them from his land.

Strange, that he never expected to driven from the island himself.

“Because I wouldn’t mind slitting that asshole’s throat if it isn’t fine,” whispered Hawke.

“That won’t be necessary,” said Fenris, though he decided it wise to steer clear of the man for the remainder of their stay. “The damage is done, and long past. I don’t live in that place anymore. And neither does he.” Not in the waking hours, at least.

Fenris ordered another drink and spent the night with his friends. In the end, the Bull went upstairs to bed alone, and Fenris walked with Hawke back to their shared quarters in Skyhold. The moon painted the grass of the castle's lawn silver and black, and turned the shadows of the trees strange and huge. 

That night, he lay awake. Fenris stared at the shadows on the ceiling and listened to a branch tap gently against the glass of the window. It sounded like the brush of bare feet touching the trunk of a tree over and over again, swaying in time with the creak of a rope. 


	5. Flush (Male Trevelyan/Dorian Pavus)(nsfw)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Naked stuff.

Trevelyan flushed easily.

It made a perverse sense. He was, after all, a Free Marcher whose fair-skinned ancestors had intermarried and interbred in the clouded highlands of Ostwick. As such, he burned at the slightest suggestion of sunlight.

To say nothing of physical and emotional stimulation.

"Incredible." Dorian gazed down at Trevelyan rutting between his legs, and at the flush that crimsoned him blood-red from sternum to temple. "You really weren't kidding."

"Nothing....to be done for it....." Trevelyan's eyes squeezed shut and he blew a hard breath, the flesh of his throat, ears, and cheeks mottled like a rooster's wattle. "Kiss me."

Dorian obliged. He slid his hands down and grabbed the globes of Trevelyan's ass, pressing him deeper until his rhythm settled into something that rocked the entire bed. It had taken some time to coax Trevelyan into doing more than just playing with hands and lips, but now that he was over the threshold, he all but inhaled Dorian. It was gratifying to feel so needed.  

It was also gratifying to feel his climax begin to build.

"Come _on_." Dorian's legs spread wider of their own volition. "Put your back into it-"

Trevelyan's thrusts were delightfully timed. They matched the liquid throb that roiled down from Dorian's stomach into his balls, then pressed forward just _so_. Dorian came with a gasp. Everything went loose and white-hot, and his body sank back boneless into the bed. Heat and chill swept over him like a fever. Content, laughing, he obliged Trevelyan as he continued to move into him, until he slammed hard into his hips and came with a frustrated, pained grunt. 

When they finally pulled apart, Dorian rolled onto his side, examining him. 

The flush was extreme. It looked nothing less than like Trevelyan had been pricked by hundreds of needles, with the blood pin-pointed under his skin. 

"Didn't you have tea this afternoon with the Countess of Brevin?" asked Dorian.

Trevelyan's eyes were still shut. He squeezed his cock a few times, wringing out the last drops of pleasure. "In half an hour, why?"

Dorian raised an eyebrow. Trevelyan followed the direction of his stare to the splotchy skin of his chest.

"It'll go down by then," said Trevelyan. "Don't you think?" 

"How long does it usually take to go down?" 

"After sex?" Trevelyan shrugged. "I don't really remember, to be honest." 

"Oh?" Dorian felt a thrill that had nothing to do with afterglow. "I broke your dry spell, did I?"

Trevelyan gave a shaky laugh. "I don't usually go all the way like that, so yes. I suppose you did." 

"Hmmmm." Dorian traced a pattern on Trevelyan's skin. "Don't tell me you abstained because you were embarrassed of someone seeing you like this."

"Of seeing me beet red?" Trevelyan huffed. "No. It's just....a big deal for me. "

A few years ago, and Dorian would have mocked him mercilessly for those words. That sort of blushing chasteness was just the sort of thing that got you singled out in Tevinter. Either you played the game and rolled in the sheets with everyone else, or you suffered the consequences, namely the whispers that something was wrong with you. Dorian had learned from an early age that the only things worth being about sex were eager and discreet. Strange, that since coming south, he had felt only patience for this man who was unsure about the most basic acts of intimacy.   

"Say no more." Dorian rested his cheek against his chest. The skin was hot to the touch. They both stank like horses, and it was glorious. "I'm honored to have you. Though you might want to forward a note to Josephine." He slapped a hand on Trevelyan's chest, and watched his handprint fade slowly from white to red. "Unless you want the rest of the castle to know that I was honored to have you, too."  


	6. Legend (Male Hawke)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A rare specimen appears in Kirkwall.

“So that’s a mermaid,” said Hawke.

A crowd had gathered along the docks. Isabela, Fenris, and Hawke sat on a low rooftop that overlooked the square, their legs dangling over the edge and the people below. Isabela was flicking bird shit at the head of a man with a harelip ("He deserves it, trust me").

The mermaid was hung up on a hook. The sailors who had caught it stood in a tight circle around it, shoving the crowd back when they pressed too close and taking coin from the few who wanted to touch it.

The mermaid, as far as legends went, was a disappointment.

It was more cow than beautiful woman. Its dull, gray skin was furred with algae, and reminded Garrett of the elephants he had seen in his father’s bestiary as a boy. It had flat flippers like paddles instead of hands, a wide, spoon-shaped tail, and a sad whiskered face that looked remarkably like a woman’s puffy vulva, now dripping red with blood.

“That's not a mermaid,” said Isabela. “That’s a dugong.”

“A what?” said Hawke and Fenris.

Isabela chuckled. “You two need to get out more. It's a dugong. A sea cow. This one probably got sick and wandered its way down the coast to Kirkwall. Poor thing.”

"So it's just an animal?" asked Fenris.

"A sad, blubbery, stinky animal that wouldn't harm a fly," said Isabela. 

Fenris shook his head. “All things once feared in the dark reveal themselves to be harmless in the light."

"Do you think the sailors know it's fake?" asked Hawke. 

"The older ones," said Isabela. "Not the _real_ old ones, they turn back into believers. But I bet you a silver that half the men on that ship tried to put their dicks in that 'mermaid' before they got into port."  

"Ugh," said Hawke.

"I'll pay you a silver to tell this crowd what you just told us," said Fenris. 

Isabela raised her brows at him. "Just a silver?"  

"Six silvers, and a pint at the Hanged Man."  

Isabela seemed to consider it. She swung her feet idly in the air and counted the heads below them.  

"What do you see down there?" she asked.  

"A shipyard of fools being duped out of their coin," said Fenris. The corner of his mouth turned up. "It would be more interesting to see them relieved of their ignorance."  

"Interesting for you. If I told them that that wasn't a mermaid, one of two things would happen. Either they'd tell the whore to shut her trap, or they'd yank me off this rooftop and kick my teeth in. Does that sound worth six silvers to you?"

Fenris stroked his chin in thought. Isabela punched him in the arm. 

"People want to believe in mermaids," said Isabela. "I say let them."

"So the legend lives on and the truth molders, forgotten," said Fenris. "Better to breathe in a lie than accept that all legends and myths are frauds. What a surprise."  

Hawke had stayed silent throughout the exchange. He turned his attention back to the crowd. His own statue stood at the edge of the docks. It was a helmeted horror caked in seagull shit, its foot planted mightily upon the Arishok’s severed head. His gaze drifted lower, to the starving, the tired-eyed, the parents of mages peering up at him openly. Some were disdainful, many admiring, all of them wondering the same thing.

_Can that really be the Champion?_

“Yes,” said Hawke. "What a surprise." 


	7. Twins (Fenris/Male Hawke)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On the road from Kirkwall.....

"Hawke, no _._ "

"It's a steal, love." Hawke's leaned over the fence of the corral. The horses for sale watched him from the far end. "And you can't walk anymore."

Fenris scowled down at his booted feet. He'd agreed, against his better judgment, to buy a pair of boots when they fled Kirkwall. The soles had blistered his feet to a bloody pulp, and it was time to admit that their running was done. They needed horses.

But not these horses.

The two in question stood at the far end of the pen next to each other, their faces pressed together like the pages of an open book. They were mirror images: fat, butter-yellow, pink ribbons in their manes, with a giant white patch on opposite sides of their faces like spilled milk that encompassed one giant blue eye. Left and right. Right and left.

Matching horses.

"What's the problem anyway?" Hawke frowned down at him from his perch on the fence. The chill wind tugged at his black cloak and slipped a gray strand of hair loose from behind his ear. "They're fresh, uncut, and cheap _._ "

Fenris stamped the frozen ground with his boot. What was his problem? This was as fortuitous a deal as they were likely to find out in the middle of nowhere. The roads were eerily deserted these days, as if a wave had come and washed all the people away. More and more they happened upon burned down settlements, patches of scorched earth, and everywhere the scent of smoke that clung to the wind _._

Perhaps that was why it was so ridiculous that Fenris' greatest problem with the two mounts in front of them was because....

"They are fat," he said.

"Better stamina," said Hawke. 

"They have ribbons in their hair."

"The owner has a daughter. What of it?" 

"They _match_."

Hawke stared at him. 

"Should we wear matching tunics as well?" said Fenris.

Hawke rolled his eyes and stepped off the fence. Before he could reply, the horse-seller—a nervous-looking man who was the last resident of the village they were passing through— sauntered over and stuffed his hands in his pockets.

“Well?” asked the man.

Hawke rubbed the back of his neck. "These are the only two you have?"

“Only two for miles around."

"How far is it to the next town?”

“About a day’s ride, three on foot,” said the man.

“We can ride double on one horse,” said Fenris. The horses were sturdy farm stock, and easily up to the task. “It’ll save us the coin.” And the embarrassment.

The peasant voiced no objections. His eyes scanned the horizon, as if expecting rogue mages and Templars to pour out of the hills at any moment.

"They from the same mare?" asked Hawke.

"Twins," said the man, and spat.

At that, Fenris knew he had lost. Hawke's face twinged at the word as if he'd been poked in the eye.

"Yup, can't stand to be apart from each other," said the man. "If you’re just going to take the one, be done with it."

Hawke looked to Fenris. His face was so sorrowful, so worn with tiredness and the ache having said goodbye to his sister for perhaps the last time as she sailed away with Isabela that Fenris almost, _almost_ -

"We need the coin,” said Fenris.

Hawke's face crumbled. He nodded, defeated, as usual, by his poverty-born frugality.

They bought a saddle and bridle from the man as well. The peasant fitted the bridle around the horse with the blue eye on its left side and led it out of the corral. The other horse tried to follow, and pricked its ears when the gate swung shut behind its sibling.

Fenris threw the saddle over the horse’s back. They worked fast. The horse in the corral watched them the whole time, stepping from foot to foot and blowing air.

Hawke put his foot in the stirrup and swung himself over. He offered a hand, and Fenris swung himself up behind him. The horse turned its head and blinked at them, then at its sibling still penned. It sat stubbornly when Hawke gave it a kick. Hawke kicked it again, and it reluctantly set out.

They were not even out of the yard when the screaming started.

The horse in the corral was running back and forth. It reared, threw its head, flared its lips. It wailed as if it was being butchered. The peasant kicked at the gate, but it kept shrieking.

Hawke sat stiffly in the saddle. Their own shuffled a little, trying to curve their route. Hawke jerked its head back forward.

"It is for the best," said Fenris.

Hawke was silent. The screaming of the horse made their own mount shiver.

"You need to harden your heart to such things," said Fenris. "I've told you so before."  

The screams reached a bloody pitch.

Hawke drew up on the reins.

“They are horses,” said Fenris. As if this bore reminding.

Hawke turned his head and stared at him. His green eyes were cold.

“If you are going to stop and try to solve the plight of every animal now as well as people—” Fenris pinched the bridge of his nose. “You’re not leaving without the other horse, are you?”

“Nope.” Hawke yanked the horse around and trotted back into the yard.

A few minutes later, they rode out onto the trail south of the settlement. Hawke sat astride Left, Fenris on Right. The horses whickered at each other happily.

“Don’t you feel like a better person?” said Hawke. He was all smiles now.

Fenris weighed their significantly lighter coin purse in their hand and said nothing.

It wasn’t a mile down the road that they passed two refugees hiking with all their possessions on their back. The two glanced at Hawke and Fenris riding on their fat yellow mounts and snickered behind their hands.

Fenris sighed, and methodically began removing the pink ribbons from his horse's mane.     


	8. Discovery (Fenris/Male Hawke) (nsfw)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hawke learns a few things about himself.

“I want you inside me.” Hawke’s hair was damp against his brow, and his body swayed with the thump of his heartbeat. “Maker, Fenris. I want you inside me all the time.”

“Um.” Fenris paused in his exertions. His hands were coated in sweat where they gripped Hawke’s hips. “I believe I am inside you at the moment.”

"I know. But like,  _more_.” Hawke let his eyes roll up. He was drunk on a feeling that he had never known existed. Words he never dared speak tumbled out of his mouth without fear or consequence. It was really hard to believe.

All his life, he’d avoided feeling like this. There had never been a single man he’d wanted to take him, and even the suggestion had left him hot with embarrassment. Him, on his knees? Him, howling like a whore? That was what Hawke did to other men, not what other men did to him. 

Now he begged Fenris to use him.

For the past three days, he'd done nothing but suck cock and get fucked. His arse was sore. His throat was raw. The feeling of warm jism on his face made him moan, and even a whisper made him go wobble-kneed. It was like falling off a cliff, without the fear of being dashed to pieces on the rocks.

He gave in and gave up, and it all felt so good.

“You’ll need a bath after this.” Fenris gave him a slap on the rump. “You smell like a barn.”

“You’re the one whose been nose deep in an arsehole, so I guess you would know.” Hawke bowed his back until he was flat in the sheets. “Maybe you can draw the water and heat it up for me...”

Fenris chuckled. He pulled out and rolled Hawke onto his back. Hawke’s legs fell open like an oiled hinge. He spread his arms out, panting in the sweltering heat of the close room and his own skin. Fenris shook his head. “You haven't seen yourself. I might have to take you out and douse you in the garden like a dog.”

“Put me on a leash first.” Maker’s breath, what was he saying? Who was he now?

Fenris licked the tips of his fingers. He watched Hawke’s face with rapt attention as he pressed them inside.

“You surrender so easily,” he growled. “All it takes is my fingertips, and you completely unravel.”

Hawke grabbed a pillow and smashed it over his face. He was a dirty mess and he prayed no one ever found out.

“Is this how you want to come?” Fenris asked. He pressed the fingers over and over in a fast little rhythm, in and up, in and up. Hawke whined.

“Please.” He peeked around the pillow. Fenris had taken his own cock in hand, stroking himself while he watched Hawke squirm in the dirty sheets of his bed.

This really was terrible. Hawke bit into the pillow and then flung it aside. Goodbye dignity, farewell reputation, hello humiliation. 

Strange, that the thought only made his balls tighten more.

Hawke came to the flutter of fingertips inside him. Fenris helped him through his climax, making those pleased, Fenris noises in the back of his throat, until he pulled out his fingers and wiped them on the bedspread. He sat down on the end of the mattress and continued to stroke himself, eventually letting go of his erection and putting both hands on the bed.

Hawke shakily sat up. He leaned, shivering, across Fenris's thighs. A hand brushed his hair out of his face.

"Happy?" asked Fenris.

"Miserable." Hawke's blood buzzed and his body hummed. Perfectly, wonderfully miserable. "Don't tell anyone."

"Your secret is safe with me," said Fenris. He stroked the line of Hawke's jaw, then turned his face and his attention to his cock. "Now, I believe you have a task to finish."


	9. Hallelujah (Fenris/Male Hawke)

It used to be he didn’t feel like a person at all.

It was hard to explain, even to himself. There was always a sense deep down of a misshapenness inside him, as if he had once been smashed into a thousand pieces and put back together wrong. His mind, his body, and his soul were separate from each other, with rock and black ice frozen hard between them.

The feeling grew worse in Kirkwall. He would be playing Wicked Grace at the Hanged Man, setting a card down crisply on the scarred wood of Varric’s table, and all at once it would be as if he was watching himself from the outside. As if the part of him that delighted in the red-and-purple face of the jack of hearts, the cold froth of the beer, the familiar smoke of the tavern, was far away and separate.

He was not a person. He was a will inside a body, but the sum of him was lost. Maybe it never was.

He wasn’t sure when that started to change.

It came with the lessening of fear, he supposed. As his years in Kirkwall went on, he found himself spending less time haunting his mansion each night on patrols, and more often joining Hawke and his absurd little crew on feast days and celebrations. He cursed his lassitude, his laziness, his willing invitation for death….but the seasons changed, and Danarius did not show his face.

In the place where fear once lived, other feelings moved in. Where once his body knew only running, now it yearned in strange new ways.

 _Hawke_.

The sound of Hawke's laugh at one of his jokes. The swell of his throat as he drank deep from a cold stream. The smell of his sweat that sped Fenris's blood to a thrumming beat.

Fenris wished he could give him what he deserved. 

After all, Hawke loved him as a person. He loved a man who did not exist. He could not see the broken mosaic that Fenris was, and for that, Fenris knew he was lying to him.

It wasn’t until Danarius was dead that the pieces began to shift back into place.

It wasn’t so much a new feeling as the departure of a not-feeling. The numbness, long receding, drew away in a great rushing tide. The simplest habit became strange in its sharpness. He would be lying in his bed, yawning with the sticky dawn, stretching his back to pop his joints, and as he raised a hand to scratch his neck…

His hand, his neck, his body, became one in the same.

His.

His body. One soul, one mind, one man. He inhaled the familiar mustiness of his house, and drank in the sunlight.

This was happening to him.

His life was happening to him, and it was real.

It was not a new feeling, but an old one. Long forgotten.

He was real. What was lost had not been lost at all, and took on greater definition every day.

Perhaps that is why he found the courage to go back to Hawke.

Before, Fenris had watched himself attempt a crude pantomime of passion as if from another room of a stranger's house.

Now, he slid a hand up Hawke’s warm back, feeling the solid weight of him, the flex of his muscles as he mouthed Fenris's name and gripped the table he was bent over.

Every detail was his. The taste of sweat on their skin, the obscene, wet sounds of their lovemaking. _Their_ lovemaking. Two bodies, two men, with no wall between them.

He was present in the moment, and that in itself was new. It was enough to make him wonder if this is how ordinary people lived their lives, or if, by his suffering, he had been granted this greatest of boons.

He laced his fingers through Hawke's, and the heat of their skin together was like living light made flesh. 


	10. Morning (Dorian Pavus/Male Trevelyan)

The Inquisitor was the first to wake every morning.

Before the sun rose, Dorian would feel the mattress dip, followed by the soft rustle of Trevelyan’s bare feet settling into the thick weave of the floor rug. Trevelyan would sit there on the edge of the bed, his head hung, stretching out his back and drawing breath into his lungs. Then he would rise, as quietly as possible, and begin taking his clothes out of his wardrobe’s drawers.

Dorian pretended to sleep through this routine. Whether Trevelyan was convinced or not, he was never sure. Trevelyan would tug on his underclothes, breeches and tunic, wash his face, rinse his mouth with the mint water Josephine had given him for satinalia to combat his bad breath, tug on and lace his boots, and then marshal himself in front of the floor mirror. Depending on the hour, he would either sit at his desk and pen a few reports, or gather his paperwork and take it downstairs.

He always did two things before he left.

First, he threw fresh logs into the fireplace and banked the fire to a roar. Then, he took the heavy quilt from where the servants had folded it on the back of the sofa and spread it gently over Dorian. Once that was done, he descended the stairs and left to attend his duties, the door jamb clicking softly behind him.

It was selfish, Dorian supposed, to pretend to sleep through this small gesture. He could just as easily rouse and draw Trevelyan into a kiss, or drag him back beneath the sheets, but some small, greedy part of him enjoyed these moments of quiet worship, imagining Trevelyan worrying over how cold Dorian was going to be, guilty about leaving him in an empty bed.

It was as new and terrifying as any other novelty he had experienced in the south. The feeling of being cared for without any expectation of gratitude.

He rolled over into the warm spot left by Trevelyan’s body and buried his nose into his pillow. The sheets smelled of his hair, and he sighed.


	11. Hands (Male Trevelyan/Dorian Pavus)

“I appreciate that the Inquisitor feels so….comfortable with open displays of affection,” said Mother Giselle.

Helisma sensed that this was an invitation for further conversation. She set down her research and followed the Revered Mother’s gaze. On the other side of the rotunda, the Inquisitor was embracing Dorian Pavus. He had just returned from a mission on the Storm Coast and was chalked with dried mud. Dorian Pavus was moving his hand slowly up and down the Inquisitor’s back. The other hand rested firmly on the Inquisitor’s buttocks.

“….but perhaps he could persuade Messere Pavus to move his hand a bit higher?” asked Mother Giselle.

“I do not believe he would be interested in taking such a request,” said Helisma.

“It may be my duty to suggest it to him then,” murmured Mother Giselle.

Helisma observed the rest of the rotunda. Fiona was deeply absorbed in her paperwork, as were the other mages patronizing the library. The acoustics of the rotunda enhanced the sensuous murmurs rather than muted them. Leliana gazed over the third-story railing with a faint smirk on her face. Solas was loudly rustling papers and kicking empty paint pots out of his way below.

“We have grown accustomed to it,” said Helisma. “I believe they enjoy your discomfort.”

Mother Giselle’s lips thinned. She gathered her skirts and descended the stairs out of the rotunda. Across the way, the Inquisitor bit Dorian Pavus’s ear, and the Tevinter laughed. 


	12. Midday (Fenris/Male Hawke) (nsfw)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> nsfw

After long morning of maddening foreplay, Hawke was finally face down in Fenris’s bed. There was a pillow under his head and a pillow under his hips—the latter propping his rear in the air like the plump present it was.

It was enough to make Fenris’s mouth go dry.

Not interested in waiting any longer, he picked up the bottle from the nightstand and drizzled cold oil into his palm. The scent of coconut sweetened the air. He stroked himself to hardness and scooted to the edge of the bed.

Hawke drew in a breath and spread his knees a little in the sheets. Fenris pressed inside until he met resistance and then pushed harder.

“There it is.” Hawke turned his face into the pillow. “Ah, fuck.”

“I don’t think the pressure is as great as you let on,” said Fenris, pushing in patiently, if relentlessly. “Though I suppose we can return to teasing if that’s—“

“I’m going to kick you," growled Hawke.

Fenris smirked and let himself enjoy the slide in. It always seemed to go on forever: the inexorable drawing into warmth and tight flesh. When he could go no further, he rested his fingertips on Hawke’s hips and gave them both a moment to breathe.

He basked in contentedness at the heat wrapped around him. He could feel Hawke’s heartbeat, could drink in the mewls and whimpers that would sound pained anywhere else. He shut his eyes and drew himself flush. Oil drooled thickly around his cock. He withdrew half an inch, and the cold shock of air made the plunge back inside all the more delicious.

Ruined by the fart noise it made.

Hawke was still moaning, but Fenris frowned. The noise was embarrassing.  

Even worse, distracting.

Irritated that he’d lost the moment, he pulled back out, slower this time, and took his time squeezing in.

A ripple of flatulence _glorped_ and _pffffted_ every inch he went.

A few unflattering noises were to be expected, but this was absurd.

Perhaps a change of angle was needed.

Pulling out, he grabbed Hawke’s hip and rolled him onto his back. Fenris dragged him to the edge of the bed and threw his legs up on his shoulders. The wet caress of his cock pressing back inside was sweet as a lover’s kiss—

 _Squorch_.

“Kaffas.” Fenris tried thrusting faster, and from the sound of it, he might as well have eaten beans for dinner. “I can’t make it stop.”

Hawke covered his face with his hands and giggled.

“You would find this funny," said Fenris. "It’s never sounded like this before.”

To prove his point, he gave three tight rolls of his hips, each with its own rude accompaniment.

“Clearly you’ve discovered a musical talent.” Hawke, still cackling.

Fenris must have looked like a petulant child with his scowl and his hard-on, because Hawke’s laughter turned gentle.   

“C’mere, lover, I’ll give you an earful.”

Resigned, Fenris crawled up into his embrace. Fitted so tightly together, their movement was no longer fucking so much as rocking, but Hawke gasped prettily as promised, and slid his arms around Fenris’s neck to moan in his ear.

“You’re going to…” he gasped. “You’re going to make me…”

Hawke’s legs spread invitingly in the air. Fenris rocked up into him—

 _Flebt_.

He tried to smother his annoyance at Hawke’s peal of amusement.

Hawke spread his legs wider. “Try it now.”

 _Fleck_.

“How about this?” Hawke pressed his thighs together.

 _Pbbbbbbt_.

“I’m beginning to think I’ll have to take myself to the Blooming Rose soon,” said Fenris.

“It’s not me, it’s him. Can’t you hear? Listen.”

By way of indication, Hawke grabbed his arse cheeks in both hands.

“Fen…..ris….” He mashed his cheeks open and closed. “You didn’t….warm….the oil….and this….is my….revenge….”

“It wants to be silent, is my translation.” Fenris scolded, though it was suddenly hard to navigate through his own laughter. “I’ll show you revenge.”

“Wait, I need a consultation first."

"For insanity?"

"I think I might have a case of the rump mumps.”

“Sounds serious. What would you recommend?”

“You’re the doctor. You tell me.”

“I’m a mage now as well as musical? Clearly I’m full of hidden talents.” Fenris considered it. “As a healer, it is my recommendation you receive a good hard pounding.”

“How will I ever afford it?”

“I’m sure you’ll find a street corner.” Fenris closed the space between them. He braced his arms on either side of Hawke's head and closed his eyes as their bodies fitted back together.

“Ten silvers say you make it worse-” Hawke gave a gasp as Fenris's hips sped to a merciless rhythm. The clap of flesh on flesh and moans soon filled the manor.

It was really too sweet. The way Hawke’s fingers clung to the bedspread, the way his mouth hung open in perfect disbelieving O at the pleasure rippling through him, the way his body gave and gave as Fenris took and took and took. For not the first time, Fenris wished there was a looking glass in his bedroom, so he could watch himself ruining Kirkwall’s Champion in his stained, rickety bed.

When Hawke at last came it was with a whimper, his cock wetting his stomach and spurting against his chest. Fenris rode him through it, absorbing each shake of his body, loving each moment that Hawke spread his legs wider and wider as if to take him in deeper, a feral, savage thugishness rising up in him as he shoved Hawke face into the pillow and took him as this it was his and his alone.

 _It is mine,_ he realized, with a swell of pride that was as delicious as it was deserved. _This is all mine. He is all mine._

Swollen with some dangerous swirling of affection and appetite, he threw himself down on Hawke and clasped him to him, his balls still slapping their maddening rhythm against Hawke’s spent, reddened ass.  

 _Mine mine mine._ Every embarrassing moment of laughter, of love, every rough moment and tender, every inch of this body, this man, was all his.

When he came, it tore through him like a fire that was more a release of agony than pleasure. It was pure satisfaction, and, he realized, as he slowed, that he hadn’t even noticed the farting noises his cock was making.

“Told you,” murmured Hawke. He gave a sigh as Fenris lay down on top of him. The sweat between their bodies already formed a cool, sticky membrane. It was hard to care when there were more interesting sensations afoot—like the way their feet rubbed together like lazy cats, or the way Hawke shuddered when Fenris lay a hand, casually, thoughtlessly, against his rising and falling side.

"But you will heat the oil next time?" asked Hawke.

"Only if you promise silence," said Fenris, and kissed him for good measure.


	13. Echoes (Male Trevelyan/Dorian Pavus)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What goes around.

The spell weakened, and Inquisitor Trevelyan awoke.  

He was down on one knee with his hands in an iron grip around his staff. It was blade down in the dirt, as if he had used it to anchor himself against some tremendous blow. He tried to stand and found he could not. Every part of him other than his head was frozen in place: the spell that had imprisoned him was still slowly dissolving and what remained in effect was massive and merciless in its raw force.   

“Inquisitor?” said a voice.

He inhaled sharply and tried to focus his eyes. There were orange smudges in the dark around him—torches that must have been there all along. They guttered oily and black, hiding the men and women who held them. A figure stepped out from their glare and onto the smooth span of earth in front of him.

It was a Qunari woman, seven feet tall, with two broken horns capped with gold studs upon her head. She took a tentative step toward him and then stopped. 

She wore the uniform of the Inquisition. 

Or rather, she wore  _a_ uniform of the Inquisition. Leather riding duster, tall black boots, with every article stitched with the all-seeing eye. It was not a uniform he remembered approving, but then again he hardly had the time these past few years to put his signature on every requisition order that crossed his desk. Hunting ancient elven gods tended to take a toll on one’s time and paperwork.

Still, the Inquisition Underground was so small and cohesive that he should have recognized one of his own agents.

“Are you here to rescue me—” A coughing fit tore through his chest. The binding spell was like a fist around his lungs. “Did Dorian Pavus find you?”

The Qunari woman glanced over her shoulder. The figures behind her were still hidden in the glare of the torches, but Trevelyan could just discern their number as three.

“In a manner of speaking.” The Qunari’s accent was strange. He couldn’t place it. “Inquisitor, do you know where you are?”

Trevelyan's mind was full of cobwebs. He tried to rise again and found, again, that he could not. His body was still frozen in place, and the magic around him was unraveling with painful slowness like wire around a spool. He drew a few deep lungfuls. Yes, he remembered. He remembered quite well where he was.

“Kal-Novas,” he murmured. An ancient dwarven thaig, lost long ago to the darkspawn and exposed when an earthquake had cracked the sheltering stone above it. He had gone with his companions deep into the crater, down into the depths and tunnels where the sunlight did not reach in order to find….

“You came here to stop the Dread Wolf,” said the Qunari.

Solas.

Trevelyan gritted his teeth as pain whipped down his body. Yes—years of tracking the ancient elf's movements, of countless spies and agents lost, of a game of shadows that had taken them from Orlais all the way to Tevinter, and it had all come down to this place. The casualties had been high, the threat insurmountable, but they had done it. Together, they had followed his trail. 

Solas had discovered the location of another orb. He had traced its location to the thaig, where he planned to claim it and use it to fulfill his original plan.

Trevelyan and his companions had raced to beat him to it. They had gone to the thaig and, against all possible odds, had found the orb where it was supposed to be. They had sealed it in a small vessel of Dagna's design and turned to flee, but it soon became clear that Solas had gotten wind of their interference and had arrived personally to deal with them. There was no time to escape. Trevelyan had given the orb to Dorian and told him to take it and go. He had stayed, alone, to face his foe. And then....    

“Inquisitor…” The Qunari edged closer. Her face was illuminated from the front now, as if the magic surrounding him carried its own strange, ethereal glow. “Do you know _when_ you are?”

His heart skipped a beat.

“It’s 9:48 Dragon.” Panic flared in hot webs through his chest. The adrenaline was enough to push back the binding spell a degree so that he could lift his head. “It’s…”

He looked at the woman in front of him.

Her strange clothing.

Her unplaceable accent.

The way she gazed at him as if he were a ghost.

Inquisitor Trevelyan looked up.

Ah.

Suspended in the air above him, held in place by a funnel of magic that began where his staff met the earth, was a giant wolf.  

Its jaws were open wide over his head. Drops of spittle hung pendant in midair between fangs long as swords. Its fur was a black hole in the world, a thousand red eyes spread across its head in a horror not witnessed since Arlathan, more terrible than anything Thedas had seen since its earliest days. 

The wolf hung above him, suspended in a spell as delicate as glass and as strong as his will. The same spell connected, like spider silk, to him.

Ah, yes.

Now he remembered.

Trevelyan laughed. It rattled his bones inside his skin. Oh yes, he remembered. The way the cave walls had shook with the Dread Wolf's howl, the way he had sent his companions to safety while he tried to slow Solas down—the way Dorian had begged him with tears and curses before Bull had dragged him away.

The way he had taken page after page out of Inquisitor Ameridan’s book without even realizing it.

He lifted his head to the Qunari woman in front of him.

“Inquisitor,” he greeted her. 

“Inquisitor,” she said back, and there were actual tears in her eyes.

He truly felt sorry for her.

His situation now made plain to him, he reassessed the condition of his body. His muscles still refused to budge. He could force them to, he supposed, but—no, he would die. That much was simple. The only thing holding him together was magic, a spell whose threads were razor-wire and would shred him into a thousand pieces if he so much as took too deep a breath. Even blinking had taken on a painful weight, as if each drag of his eyelids was shaving hours off his life.

“I can't ask forgiveness enough for leaving you this mess," said Trevelyan. “I never meant this burden to fall on anyone’s shoulders but my own.”

“The Dread Wolf’s agents are trying to awaken him,” said the Qunari. “They were driven to ground after you and he both disappeared, but they’ve had a resurgence and if they manage to get him what he needs-”

“Then the Veil comes down and life as we know it ends.” Trevelyan considered the wolf affixed in the air above him. “He was my friend, you know. First among my companions, my most trusted and cherished."  _An enemy can attack, but only an ally can betray you_. It hurt too much to laugh again. “I’ve never encountered anyone as powerful as Solas. He….”

His whole body heaved as if it was impaled on a thousand shards of glass—the spell was deteriorating faster now.

“Inquisitor, please," said the Qunari. "No offense, but I need to know how to defeat him.”

Quicker to the point that he’d been. Ruder than he’d been too.

“I….don’t know. I set a trap for him by using lyrium runes in the dwarven temple. It stunned him, sapped most of his power, but he was still too much.”

His prosthetic hand creaked as it gripped the staff.

“Then I remembered a spell. Funny, how these things circle around. I didn’t even think. I just needed to hold him, to freeze him long enough for help to come. Until the Inquisition…..”

A different pain, dread, stabbed down into his bones.

“What year is it?” he asked.

“Inquisitor—”

“What year is it?”

“13:87 Hammer. Three-hundred and fifty years after you disappeared.”

The cave floor blurred in his vision. His body was shaking now, whether from shock or from magic, he could not tell.

“Tell me,” he said. His voice small in the emptiness of the cavern. “Tell me as much as you can.”

The Qunari woman glanced at the wolf above his head. Whatever calculations were being made looked grim.

“Around the time you disappeared, the Qunari ordered a full invasion of the Imperium. They had perfected a weapon to make mages Tranquil at range. It allowed them to crush the opposition and drive hard into the South. Divine Victoria sent scouts to search for you, but the chaos at the time was….”  

“Josie, Cullen, Cassandra, my friends-”

“They fought. Many of them died.”

A sudden hysteria made him want to leap to his feet, as if he could somehow save them now. “What became of the Inquisition?”

“Divine Victoria lead it in your absence. She continued to uproot Fen’Harel’s cells across Thedas until she was assassinated a few years later. Her reforms were violently revoked.”

“And the College? The mages, my life’s work…”

"Her successor purged mages across Thedas.”

The breath was driven out of him.

“Many were killed or captured by the Qunari, and many more by the Chantry. Divine Heloise declared magic a sin, and all children born with its curse to be given to the new Templar Order to be executed. She filled the Chantry with fanatics and wrestled the new Seekers of Truth away from Cassandra Pentaghast. Her reforms stuck for a long time. The age after Dragon was called the Pyre Age for a reason.”

His eyes burned.

“I fought for us to be free,” he whispered. “I fought every day of my life so we wouldn't have to lie awake at night afraid we might be raped our or children stolen away. For the right to not be made Tranquil for asking questions. We saved them, dammit. The Inquisition was a mage Inquisition and we _saved_ them—”

“I know,” she said. “Hope was dim, but not lost. The Inquisition survived in shadows because of your example.”

He took in the staff on her back.

“That….is a relief then.” Not to him, not to any life he might have had, but one he would have to accept. Time was a thin thing now.

“Please.” It felt like a boot was caving in his chest. “I came to Kal-Novas with my companions, Bull and Sera. Do the records say what happened to them?"

"No, I'm sorry."

He was nearing the last piece of the puzzle. If he had truly never been found, it was because something had prevented them from rescuing him. The operation had been covert enough that all it would have taken were a few deaths, accidental or designed, for him to be lost to history.

Something had happened to Sera and Bull, and that meant something had happened to....

"There is one other person," he said.

He couldn't do it. He couldn't ask the question. It seemed as if mere minutes had passed since he last saw Dorian Pavus. They had stood here, face to face, arguing in this cold, damp pit beneath the earth. if he concentrated, he could still smell Dorian's cologne and hear the echoes of their anger still in the air.

"You must be joking."

"Go back with Bull and Sera."

"You're either very slow or very stupid if you think for a minute that I'd let you do this alone." Dorian's voice was firm, but underneath it was a tremor.

"I need you to take this, hide it." He shoved the focus into Dorian's hands. The orb sang with barely contained energy, rattling around the containment cube built around it. "He can't get ahold of it, Dorian. No one can."

Dorian's eyes shone. "If I didn't know any better, I'd think you'd planned it this way."

"No, never."

"Then come with me."

"I have to stop him."

"He'll kill you."

"Maybe." A voice inside him had hoped that Solas's grief for a forgotten past wasn't monstrous enough to destroy the future they'd created together. It was a foolish voice, and one he should have stopped listening to long ago. "It would be thematically appropriate."

Dorian's laugh was choked with tears. "You bastard."

Trevelyan pulled him into an embrace. "I'll come back."

"No, you won't."

"I will. I'll come back. I promise you, there's nothing in this world that will ever keep me from finding you again."

And then Dorian had gone, and Trevelyan had been alone with the Dread Wolf. 

 _I will survive this, love,_ he had thought. _I will come back._

Now, he craned his neck up and took in the wolf above him.

_You stole my future, you bastard. Me and all the dead you threw aside just because you could._

He let himself lean back against his staff. Enough stalling. He had to know.

“Dorian Pavus, what became of him?”

The Qunari woman opened her mouth and shut it.

“He was the love of my life. If he did not return to find me, it is because something prevented him. Please, if you know what became of him, please tell me.”

The qunari woman bit her lip. She opened her mouth, shut it, started again.

“I don't think he knew how to break the spell," she said. "And then everything fell apart so quickly. All I know is that he escaped. He returned to Minrathous and was elected Archon during the Qunari invasion. He….he helped free the slaves. He lived a long life, and a happy one. He died at an old age....He….”

Trevelyan met her eyes. They shone with fear and grief and something he wasn’t certain of.

But he saw the truth. Dorian Pavus had spent his life trying to find a way to save him. He had waited for him.

He had always been waiting for him.

“It’s all right,” he told the girl softly. “you don’t have to tell me anymore.”

She relaxed at that, and anguish twisted inside him.

Strange, he thought, as tears pricked his eyes. He had taken every lesson from Ameridan but the most important one.

_“Take moments of happiness where you find them. The world will take the rest.”_

Maybe this was what he deserved.

The spell began to unravel. He felt the great and terrible weight of Solas’s power as the wolf began to wake, the delicate architecture of the spell splintering and groaning as if any moment it would shattered and send the Dread Wolf’s rage upon him.

“Fight well, Inquisitor,” he told her, as he felt himself began to tatter and fade at the edges. “And never take for granted what you have here and now.”

The snarl of the Dread Wolf drowned him out. He wondered if the Inquisitor heard. He wondered if she would listen or if, like everything else, this was simply a lesson to be learned after all was lost and nothing else remained.

“Be better than I was,” he said.

And was gone.   


End file.
